Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/235



No moment in the game of Lacrosse is of more intense and nervous interest, than the critical junctures of attack and defence at the goals. The fate of every game culminates at one or the other. No score can be made by any other play than that which puts the ball in, and then the score is not individual but collective.

The moment the ball is thrown to goal—with no chance of interception until it gets there,—the whole fortune and stake concentrates in responsibility on the individual skill of its keeper, irrespective of all play that preceded it. Nothing antecedent to the straight throw or tip, which is to win the game or be stopped, can in the least avert the danger. There are many chances of retrieving a mistake on the field, before it becomes critically dangerous, but